


Polyclef

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-07
Updated: 2011-07-07
Packaged: 2017-10-21 03:00:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snowman and Droog have a chat about Slick. Contains an awful lot of Nadsat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Polyclef

It's three in the morning, same time it always is, when she shows up in the back room. Ain't nobody could sleep in this casino, but the noise outside seems to always die down when she saunters in.

We all ought to expect her by now, but it always seems to come as a surprise to Slick and only Slick. I keep telling him he ought to get a clue by now that she's always going to show up eventually. He says she treats him nicer if she thinks he thinks she ain't coming. I say bullshit. He says it ain't. I wave the Cuestick at him. He says fine, next time he'll pull some sappy I was expecting you bullshit.

I tell him, good.

"Been expecting you, Snow," he says to the dama.

She takes a seat at the bar and Deuce is on about getting her her favorite, straight vodka. "Like hell you have, jackass," she says back to him.

He scrunches his litso at me, and I can tell he's blaming me for his failed plan the way he always does like, then he sidles up next to her.

"I gives 'em ten minutes," Boxcars says. "She'll have him on the floor with a boot in his chest."

"Five," says I. "And she'll pull his own knife on him." I pony Slick too well by now to think anything different.

Boxcars slides a pack of smokes across the table. We been through this before. "Let's make it a deal," he says.

"Horrorshow." I pull out a cancer of my own and light it.

They must've been staring at each other the whole time Boxcars and I was govoreeting, because it's only now they start gabbing like fishwives.

"The Doctor asked me to come down here and shut you down," Snowman says.

"Shucks, you ain't goin' to, are you, ma'am?" Deuce asks. Slick gives him a glare that makes it clear he'd better not ask any more questions unless the dame speaks to him first, which she won't. Deuce makes a real show out of straightening up all the bottles behind the bar.

"You can't shut me down," Slick growls. Sometimes I get thinking he thinks he's some kind of dangerous-and-intimidating like chelloveck. He ain't, but he does a damn good impression. "I own this goddamn city."

"Yeah?" Snowman slides off her bar stool catlike graceful, and climbs up on Slick's lap. She plants an uncomfortably long kiss right on his rot, and anyone familiar with the scene could tell you she's sliding her hands up inside his jacket and taking her pick of his nozhes. When she finally pulls away, Slick looks like a fish who just got his first bicycle and sure as hell hasn't a goddamn clue what to do next. "Guess who owns you," Snowman says. She's got the flat of her purloined blade pressed to Slick's neck.

Boxcars says to me, all impressed like, "Goddamn. You must be one psychic sombitch, Droog."

I tell him no, I just viddied the broad in action a few times, and I was running low on cigarettes anyway.

"You get the fuck out, you bitch," Slick says.

Snowman doesn't look intent on moving any time soon. The way she carries herself says make me, and she reminds me of the way lions have great sodding drats over who owns what malenky bit of land.

I got to commend her dedication to being a huge pain in the ass. It takes real commitment to worm up under somebody's scales the way she does. I pony what Slick viddies in her. Fortunately I don't viddy it myself.

Slick takes a real horrorshow drink of whatever veshch it is he's drinking. Knowing him it's something halfway decent but not quite there. "You take yourself and move you somewhere else," he spits. He's spelling the slovos right out, not making any bones about wanting her gone. "Boxcars and Droog'll be happy to get you somewhere that ain't fucking here."

Snowman's done with him. She climbs off his lap and you can almost viddy him starting to want to shive her. That or give her the old in-out. Possibly both. Probably in that order.

I don't want to stick around to learn which, meaning it's time to itty.

"Just where the fuck do you want us to take her, Boss?" Boxcars asks. He's not the sharpest nozh in the drawer.

"Why not ask the dame," I suggest. She might be a space soomka from the future and the past, but ain't no reason not to treat her dobby. Not until she starts trying to shive somebody, anyway.

"Sometimes I swear you're the only one been taking lessons on how not to be an ass," she says, which is code for I appreciate it. "The Doctor made arrangements. You call me a taxi, I'll be on my way. But I'll be back."

"You're a fuckin' taxi," Slick chumbles, and downs the rest of his drink. Boxcars goes to get the lady a taxi. Deuce is trying to stop Slick giving himself alcohol poisoning.

I offer to escort the cheena out into the nochy to wait for her cab.

"Been meaning to have a few words with you anyway," she says. I hold out my arm real gentlemanly like; she takes it and we walk out through the casino. The lewdies at the card tables are all staring at her, but a quick glance at 'em gets 'em going straight back to their games real skorry like.

The street is quiet. You could hear a mouse take a breath. There's a bench and a faithful starry lamppost that look like they've been there since before the universe started. I know they only been there since Slick built this town.

Snowman digs a cancer out of her pocket but she can't find matches. I hold out my own cancer. She ponies what I mean to do and lights hers off the cherry on mine. "Thanks," she mutters. It's all very sweet. Don't change the fact that I'm thinking of a hundred different ways I want to kill her.

"The hell do you want, then."

"Just intelligent conversation, is all."

Color me surprised. I never known the sodding soomka to be polite. "Govoreet at me."

"I been worried about Slick," she admits. Hell'd freeze over before she let anybody but me know that.

"The hell would you worry about him for."

She leans on the lamppost. "Damned if I know." She takes a pause, and I can about viddy the gears turning inside her gulliver. "He's been awful reckless lately, ain't he?"

I got to respect the sharp. She staked her claim on him a long time ago and she ain't never gone back on her word that she'd be the one to oobivat him someday; hence she takes it real baddiwad when he gets hurt by somebody who ain't her.

"You're insinuating it's my fault," I say.

"Maybe."

"He ain't a fucking dog. I don't viddy how it's my responsibility to look after him like he's one."

"It's your responsibility, Diamonds, because I say it is."

I take a deep breath. Ain't no use flying off the handle; not with her. Consider me firmly cemented to the sodding handle for the time being.

When she says she wants something done, it gets done and there's hell to pay if it don't.

I sit on the bench and consider lighting another cancer. "What do you want me to do," I say.

The dama takes a seat next to me and kicks off her sabogs. I tell her she's going to get her stockings dirty. "I want you to look after him better than you been doing," she chumbles. "Jackass."

Ah, now that's the Snowman I pony and barely tolerate. I was wondering where the hell she went. It only took a glass of liquor, a smoke, and the cold nochy air to get her this way, which is better than normal. Usually it takes all that plus a couple of threats thrown in, just for good measure like.

She doesn't wait for me to say whether I will or won't. She just grabs another cigarette and lights it off the one she was just smoking, which hasn't even smoldered out yet. I'm impressed.

"Them things will kill you," I say, mostly out of habit. I'm too used to Slick smoking like a goddamn chimney every time something ruffles his feathers.

Predictably Snowman says back, no they won't. I tell her it must be nice knowing exactly how the world's going to end. She says it has its perks, namely she can do whatever the hell she wants because she knows how it'll turn out beforehand.

That would bore me to death.

We sit there and don't talk for a while, the way only lewdies who got a real horrorshow understanding of each other can. I don't like her in the slightest, and she don't like me, but god knows we know how to tolerate each other by now. She and Slick can't claim that. He prides himself on pissing her off.

A dama like her, you got to learn to accommodate before she shives you right in the back. I'd go so far as to say I admire her oomny use of violence and her appreciation for its many applications. Wouldn't say it to to her litso, though. Veshches like that, you can't just say to a lady. You got to let her know it some other way.

I wonder where the goddamn cab is. She probably does too. I don't ask her about it.

I help her put her shoes back on and tell her goodnight when it finally shows up.

She says, "Goodnight, Diamonds."


End file.
